Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (50 page)
Authors: Kenneth C. Davis
Thrown into this simmering stew of alliances was the coming revolution in Russia. Czarist Russia was tied to England and France through mutual defense treaties and bloodlines (the king of England and the czar were relatives). The threat of a Socialist revolution pledged to destroy the monarchy on its eastern borders pressed on Kaiser Wilhelm, Germany’s autocratic young leader who had dismissed Bismarck as chancellor.
As tensions heightened, all these nations had armed heavily, producing a state of military readiness that did wonders for the armament industry, and the huge munitions makers of Europe happily kept the cauldron bubbling. International tension was good for profits. But whenever countries feel so well armed, they believe themselves invincible—and that was the case in the major European capitals. The urge to use such might acquires a life of its own. Fierce nationalism, visions of invincibility, complicated alliances, and antagonism from an earlier century were combining to suck Europe into a violent maelstrom. Again, as throughout history, personalities determined the course of events as much as did economics or border disputes. Cooler heads and gentlemanly diplomacy were lost to nineteenth-century ideals of honor and country in a new century in which people didn’t know how powerful their destructive powers had become. Perhaps the men raised in the nineteenth century on chivalrous, aristocratic ideals and wars still fought on horseback had no idea what havoc their twentieth-century arsenals could wreak. The world of sabers and cavalry charges was giving way to such inventions as mustard gas, U-boats, and the flamethrower (perfected by Germany), the tank (developed by the British), and a new generation of hand grenades and water-cooled machine guns. When these modern tools failed, the ancient bayonet would be the weapon of last resort. The carnage was unbelievable in battles that have become legend. Marne. Ypres. Gallipoli. Verdun. Argonne Forest. Soon these fields and plains sprouted forests of crosses.
The scenes of battle were played out for the most part in Europe, especially on the flat plains in Belgium and France, where the inhuman trench warfare would eat bodies as a flame consumes dry wood. But the real prize was elsewhere. The bottom line was that the nations of Europe were fighting over the course of empire. The spoils of victory in this Great War were Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Whatever the professed reasons for going to war, it was the material wealth—the gold and diamonds of South Africa, the metals and rubber of Africa, the rubber of Malaysia, the oil of the Mideast—that was at the heart of the conflict.
By the time the archduke lay dead in Sarajevo, the competition had long since commenced. Germany was a well-established power in Africa, as was Belgium. France’s empire extended into Indochina. England’s empire covered much of Asia, Africa, and the Far East. British armies had already been bloodied in the Boer War for control of South Africa and in the Crimean War for control of the Middle East, where England had also taken over the Suez Canal. Supreme on the oceans, England was now threatened by a German navy that was being built with only one conceivable purpose—to challenge that British supremacy for eventual control of the wealth of the empire. The leaders of Europe knew their own national resources were exhaustible. Power, even survival, in the new age of industry and mechanization would come from control of these resources in the colonial worlds. The dead might pile up at Verdun, Ypres, the Marne, and a dozen other storied battlefields, but to the victor would go the riches of other continents.
Who sank the Lusitania, and what difference did it make?
For generations of American schoolchildren, the reason America finally decided to enter the war in Europe was to protect the open seas from German raiders in their U-boats who were killing innocent Americans aboard passenger ships. The most notorious example of this practice was supposedly the sinking of the passenger ship
Lusitania.
The problem with this explanation is that it has little to do with the facts.
Secure in its control of two continents and holding on to sufficient bits of an empire in Asia and the Pacific, America was wary of involving itself in Europe’s war. Avoiding “entangling alliances” had been the underpinning of American foreign policy since the days of Washington and Jefferson. Neutralism and isolationism were powerful forces in America, where a good deal of the population was descended from the countries now at one another’s throats in the mud of France. Eight million German Americans had no desire to see America at war with Germany. Another 4.5 million Irish Americans held no love for Great Britain, then in the midst of tightening its grip on Ireland as the Irish Republican movement was reaching its peak.
Early in May 1915, the German embassy in Washington published advertisements in American papers warning Americans to avoid sailing on British ships in the Atlantic. On May 7, 1915, the Cunard liner
Lusitania
was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland. In only eighteen minutes, the huge ship went down, taking with it almost 1,200 of its 1,959 passengers and crew. Among the dead were 128 Americans.
President Wilson resisted the indignant clamor for war that followed the sinking, and dealt with the Germans through a series of diplomatic notes demanding reparations and German disavowal of passenger ship attacks. William Jennings Bryan, the American secretary of state, thought even these notes were too severe a response, and resigned. Although the German government agreed to make reparations, it held to its claim that the
Lusitania
was carrying armaments and thus was a war vessel. The British denied this, but it was later revealed that the
Lusitania
carried 4,200 cases of ammunition and 1,250 shrapnel cases, which exploded when the torpedo struck, speeding the
Lusitania
’s demise.
While the sinking definitely increased tension between America and Germany, the incident had little to do with drawing America into the war. President Wilson continued to press his policies of neutrality while seeking to negotiate a settlement. He campaigned for reelection in 1916 under the Democratic slogan “He Kept Us Out of War.” It would be April 1917, almost two years after the sinking, before America entered the war, already in its closing stages. In February 1917, the Germans began unlimited submarine warfare against all merchant shipping, including American ships, and Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. The crucial change came with the revelation of the Zimmermann Telegram, which uncovered a German plot to start a war between Mexico and the United States. British agents turned over this information to America, and when German submarines began to attack U.S. ships without warning in March, enraged Americans demanded war.
The stated reasons for America’s involvement were freedom of the seas and the preservation of democracy. But neither side in this war had a monopoly on illegal naval warfare. Nor was the democratic ideology so powerful among America’s allies that Wilson thought he should fight to maintain it as far back as 1914.
In his favor, Wilson tried admirably to restrain both sides and mediate a peace. But as in almost every other war America has fought, powerful forces in industry, banking, and commerce cynically thought that war was healthy. And if the world was going to be divvied up after the fighting was over, America might as well get its fair share of the spoils.
1914
June 28
The crown prince of Austria, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, is murdered in the city of Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip. Using the assassination as a pretext, the Austro-Hungarian government declares war on Serbia, its tiny southern neighbor, five days later. Russia begins to mobilize its troops in defense of Serbia.
August 1
Allied to Austria, Germany declares war on Russia. Two days later, Germany declares war on France.
August 4
Bound by mutual defense treaties, Great Britain declares war on Germany as German troops invade Belgium on the way to France.
August 5
The United States formally declares its neutrality and offers to mediate the growing conflict. In America, opinions are divided two ways: pro-Allies press for aid for England, France, and Belgium, who are depicted as victims of barbarous German aggression and atrocities; neutralists and pro-Germans—mostly German Americans—both want the United States to avoid taking sides. Pro-Allies form the Lafayette Escadrille to join the French air force, while other Americans join the British army and the French Foreign Legion or, like Ernest Hemingway, become ambulance drivers. Irish Americans denounce any assistance to Great Britain.
August 6
Germany’s Central Powers ally, Austria-Hungary, declares war on Russia.
August 23
Japan declares war on Germany.
September 5
The Battle of the Marne. In the first horrific battle of the war, with each side taking casualties of 500,000, a French-English repulse of the German invasion stalls Germany’s plan to quickly subdue continental Europe before Allied forces can fully mobilize. Instead, German forces fall back, beginning three years of devastating, stalemated trench warfare. The defeat also forces Germany to step up its U-boat (
Unterseeboot
) warfare to counter British naval superiority, which threatens to cut Germany off from essential war supplies. Although the German U-boats initially concentrate their attacks on warships, the submarines eventually turn to commercial and passenger shipping, a strategy that will ultimately give the United States its justification to join the Allied side.
1915
January 28
The
William P. Frye
, an American merchant ship carrying wheat to England, is torpedoed by a U-boat, the first such attack against American commercial shipping.
January 30 Colonel Edward M. House (1858–1938), a Texan who was responsible for Wilson’s nomination and is now the president’s most powerful adviser, sails to Europe to attempt to mediate a peace agreement. Each side feels that a quick victory is possible, and all parties decline to negotiate.
February 4 Germany declares the waters around the British Isles a war zone, threatening all shipping that approaches England.
May 1
The American tanker
Gulflight
is sunk by a German U-boat. Germany apologizes, but the ocean war is escalating as the British call for a blockade of all German ports, despite President Wilson’s protest.
May 7
The British ocean liner
Lusitania
is sunk by a U-boat. Germany claims—reliably, it turns out—that the liner carried munitions; the British deny this. Nearly 1,200 of the 1,959 passengers aboard die; 128 of them are Americans who had disregarded the warnings published by Germany in American newspapers to avoid passage on vessels carrying wartime cargoes. A diplomatic crisis follows, as Germany refuses to pay reparations or disavow the attack. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, a pacifist, resigns in protest over what he deems a tilt toward England in Wilson’s reaction to the
Lusitania
’s sinking. In a series of notes to Germany, Wilson warns against infringement of American rights. Although the sinking of the
Lusitania
has come down in history as one of the reasons the U.S. joined the war, the actual impact of the sinking was slight, and it would be almost two full years before America committed itself to war.
July 2
A German professor at Cornell University explodes a bomb in the U.S. Senate and shoots J. P. Morgan the next day. The captured professor commits suicide. A few days later, the head of German propaganda in the United States leaves on a New York subway train a suitcase filled with information about the existence of a German spy ring. It is found by the Secret Service and released to the press, further arousing anti-German sentiment.
July 25
The American merchant ship
Leelanaw
, carrying flax, is sunk off the coast of Scotland by a U-boat.
August 10
General Leonard Wood of Rough Riders fame establishes the first of several private military camps that will train 16,000 “unofficial” soldiers by 1916.
November 7
Twenty-seven Americans die in an Austrian submarine attack on the Italian liner
Ancona
.
December 7
President Wilson requests a standing army of 142,000 and reserves of 400,000.
1916
January 7
Responding to American pressure, Germany pledges to abide by international rules of naval warfare.
February 2
A congressional resolution warns Americans to avoid travel on ships owned by the warring nations. In response, President Wilson declares that American rights must be protected.
March 15
The Army Reorganization Act is passed by Congress. Under this measure, the army will be brought to a strength of 175,000 and the National Guard to 450,000 by the end of June.
March 24
Three more Americans die when a French ship is torpedoed in the English Channel, and public sympathies turn increasingly in favor of the Allied cause and against Germany.
